Big, big news – we're going on STRIKE November 10, 2015.

On November 10, we’re holding a national day of
action to support $15 an hour and union rights. Believe me, you want to
be there.

As fast-food workers across the country go on STRIKE on November
10, people across the country will be coming together to stand with
them, with child care workers and with all 64 million underpaid workers
making less than $15. Because it’s TIME for $15.

Together we’re turning the tide in favor of working people and our
families. And we’ll need everyone’s help – including yours – to make
this a reality.

Sign up now to let us know you’ll be there on November 10 and be one
of millions demanding the fair pay, respect, and the future we deserve!

We're angry. Fast-food workers like me work hard all day – and still don't make enough to pay our rent or feed our families.

International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity

AN EVENING OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE CUBAN PEOPLE

Featuring Kenia Serrano Puig, President of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP)

Friday November 13, 7:30pm

East Bay Center for the Performing Arts

339 11th Street, Richmond CA 94801-3105

Doors Open 6:30pm

$10-20 Donation at the Door

(nobody turned away for lack of funds)

Students and children free admission

This
will be a unique opportunity to hear from the Cuban perspective about
the new stage of U.S.-Cuba relations and the role that the U.S. Cuba
solidarity movement can play in ending the U.S. blockade.

ICAP
is a social organization founded on December 30, 1960 for the purpose
of promoting and explaining to the peoples of the world the relations of
solidarity that sparked the Cuban Revolution. ICAP is the vehicle to
reach around the globe to people who are in solidarity with Cuba. ICAP
is that interface that strengthens the network of solidarity, while
representing the Cuban people, and delivering a strong message that
solidarity not only benefits Cuba but the peoples of the world who are
aspiring to promote the idea that a better world is possible for all.

Initiated by the International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity

On November 15 and 16 the
heads of governments of the G20 — the world’s 20 largest economies —
along with the heads of their central banks, as well as the top bankers
of the world, will be holding their annual summit meeting, which is
taking place this year in Turkey.

Please support this call to make November 15, the first day of the G20 Summit – A SAY NO TO CAPITALISM AND RACISM DAY. Endorse this call and help to build the protest in NYC (and elsewhere)

The
next G20 summit will be the most important G20 meeting since the global
financial crash of 2008. The current volatility in global financial
markets is a sign that the world capitalist system is entering a new,
more intractable and more violent crisis.

No
matter what the official G20 meeting agenda says, the question on the
next G20 summit’s agenda (which in reality is dominated by the
super-rich of the U.S. and the West) will be: What must be done to
rescue world capitalism and the 1% that profit from its perpetuation?

Ultimately,
this means that the people of the world will be subjected to more
unbearable inequality, poverty, hunger, homelessness, gentrification,
neo-liberalism, austerity, more joblessness, more low wages, more war
and occupation and the even greater prospect of a planet that is rapidly
exhausting its capacity to sustain life.

JUST
AS OMINOUS AND DANGEROUS, the deepening world economic and political
crisis will create an even greater opportunity for the manifestation of
racism and fascism.

The
police war against Black people in the United States that has given
rise to the powerful Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the war
against Arab, African, Asian, Muslim, Indigenous and Latino/a migrants
from the borders of Europe to the U.S.-Mexican border are examples of
the intersection between capitalism and racism.

The
time has come for progressive forces across the world to stand up and
say that capitalism can’t be reformed and should not be saved.

We
will no longer tolerate the system killing, oppressing, marginalizing,
or scapegoating people of Color, migrants, poor people, women, lesbian,
gay, bi, trans and queer people, people with disabilities, young people
and all working people.

What will happen at the event?

EditThis event is part of the Global Climate March.
On November 30th, world leaders meet in Paris to start negotiating the
next global climate deal. That’s why, the day before, people around the
world will take to the streets and push leaders at every level of
government to commit to 100% clean energy. Together, we can push the
world towards a climate deal that gets us off dirty energy and unleashes
clean energy for all. Let's make history -- RSVP on the right for this Global Climate March event!

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Commute Kevin Cooper's Death Sentence

Sign the Petition:http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/petition.php

Urge
Gov. Jerry Brown to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence. Cooper has
always maintained his innocence of the 1983 quadruple murder of which he
was convicted. In 2009, five federal judges signed a dissenting opinion
warning that the State of California "may be about to execute an
innocent man." Having exhausted his appeals in the US courts, Kevin
Cooper's lawyers have turned to the Inter American Commission on Human
Rights to seek remedy for what they maintain is his wrongful conviction,
and the inadequate trial representation, prosecutorial misconduct and
racial discrimination which have marked the case. Amnesty International
opposes all executions, unconditionally.

"The
State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." - Judge
William A. Fletcher, 2009 dissenting opinion on Kevin Cooper's case

Kevin Cooper has been on death row in California for more than thirty years.

In
1985, Cooper was convicted of the murder of a family and their house
guest in Chino Hills. Sentenced to death, Cooper's trial took place in
an atmosphere of racial hatred — for example, an effigy of a monkey in a
noose with a sign reading "Hang the N*****!" was hung outside the venue
of his preliminary hearing.

Take action to see that Kevin Cooper's death sentence is commuted immediately.

Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence.

Following
his trial, five federal judges said: "There is no way to say this
politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing."

Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt.

Tell California authorities: The death penalty carries the risk of irrevocable error. Kevin Cooper's sentence must be commuted.

In
2009, Cooper came just eight hours shy of being executed for a crime
that he may not have committed. Stand with me today in reminding the
state of California that the death penalty is irreversible — Kevin
Cooper's sentence must be commuted immediately.

Kevin
Cooper's case will be the subject of a new episode of CNN's "Death Row
Stories" airing on Sunday, July 26 at 7 p.m. PDT. The program will be
repeated at 10 p.m. PDT. The episode, created by executive producers
Robert Redford and Alex Gibney, will explore how Kevin Cooper was framed
by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and District
Attorney.Viewers on the east coast can see the program at 10 p.m. EDT
and it will be rebroadcast at 1 a.m. EDT on July 27. Viewers in the
Central Time zone can see it at 9 p.m. and midnight CDT. Viewers in the
Mountain Time zone can see it at 8 p.m. and ll p.m MDT. It will be aired
on CNN again during the following week and will also be able to be
viewed on CNN's "Death Row Stories" website.

Kevin Cooper: An Innocent Victim of Racist Frame-Up- from the Fact Sheet at: www.freekevincooper.org
Kevin
Cooper is an African-American man who was wrongly convicted and
sentenced to death in 1985 for the gruesome murders of a white family in
Chino Hills, California: Doug and Peggy Ryen and their daughter Jessica
and their house- guest Christopher Hughes. The Ryens' 8 year old son
Josh, also attacked, was left for dead but survived.

Convicted
in an atmosphere of racial hatred in San Bernardino County CA, Kevin
Cooper remains under a threat of imminent execution in San Quentin. He
has never received a fair hearing on his claim of innocence. In a
dissenting opinion in 2009, five federal judges of the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals signed a 82 page dissenting opinion that begins: "The
State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." 565 F.3d
581.

There is significant evidence that exonerates Mr. Cooper and points toward other suspects:


The coroner who investigated the Ryen murders concluded that the
murders took four minutes at most and that the murder weapons were a
hatchet, a long knife, an ice pick and perhaps a second knife. How could
a single person, in four or fewer minutes, wield three or four weapons,
and inflict over 140 wounds on five people, two of whom were adults
(including a 200 pound ex-marine) who had loaded weapons near their
bedsides?

 The sole surviving victim of the murders,
Josh Ryen, told police and hospital staff within hours of the murders
that the culprits were "three white men." Josh Ryen repeated this
statement in the days following the crimes. When he twice saw Mr.
Cooper's picture on TV as the suspected attacker, Josh Ryen said "that's
not the man who did it."

 Josh Ryen's description of
the killers was corroborated by two witnesses who were driving near the
Ryens' home the night of the murders. They reported seeing three white
men in a station wagon matching the description of the Ryens' car
speeding away from the direction of the Ryens' home.


These descriptions were corroborated by testimony of several employees
and patrons of a bar close to the Ryens' home, who saw three white men
enter the bar around midnight the night of the murders, two of whom were
covered in blood, and one of whom was wearing coveralls.


The identity of the real killers was further corroborated by a woman
who, shortly after the murders were discovered, alerted the sheriff's
department that her boyfriend, a convicted murderer, left
blood-spattered coveralls at her home the night of the murders. She also
reported that her boyfriend had been wearing a tan t-shirt matching a
tan t-shirt with Doug Ryen's blood on it recovered near the bar. She
also reported that her boyfriend owned a hatchet matching the one
recovered near the scene of the crime, which she noted was missing in
the days following the murders; it never reappeared; further, her sister
saw that boyfriend and two other white men in a vehicle that could have
been the Ryens' car on the night of the murders.

Lacking
a motive to ascribe to Mr. Cooper for the crimes, the prosecution
claimed that Mr. Cooper, who had earlier walked away from custody at a
minimum security prison, stole the Ryens' car to escape to Mexico. But
the Ryens had left the keys in both their cars (which were parked in the
driveway), so there was no need to kill them to steal their car. The
prosecution also claimed that Mr. Cooper needed money, but money and
credit cards were found untouched and in plain sight at the murder
scene.

The jury in 1985 deliberated for seven days
before finding Mr. Cooper guilty. One juror later said that if there had
been one less piece of evidence, the jury would not have voted to
convict.

The evidence the prosecution presented at
trial tying Mr. Cooper to the crime scene has all been
discredited… (Continue reading this document at:
http://www.savekevincooper.org/_new_freekevincooperdotorg/TEST/Scripts/DataLibraries/upload/KC_FactSheet_2014.pdf)

This message from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. July 2015

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For
Immediate Release – Thursday, October 29, 2015

Solitary Prisoners’ Lawyers Slam CDCR
for Sleep
Deprivation

Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition

SAN FRANCISCO
– Yesterday, lawyers for prisoners in the class action case Ashker v.
Brown submitted a letter condemning Pelican Bay prison guards’ “wellness
checks,” which have widely been viewed as sleep deprivation. The letter
was submitted to United States Magistrate Judge Nandor Vadas, and calls
on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR)
to put an end to the checks.

Last month, prisoners achieved a
historic victory in the settlement of Ashker v. Brown where the
indefinite long term solitary confinement was effectively ended in
California, with Magistrate Judge Vadas currently monitoring
implementation of the settlement terms.

The guards at Pelican bay
Security Housing Units have been conducting disruptive cell checks
every 30 minutes around the clock for three months, causing prisoners
widespread sleep disruption. The process is loud and according to
prisoners, “the method and noise from the checks is torture.”

Attorneys
representing Pelican Bay SHU prisoners have just completed extensive
interviews with prisoners who demand that “the every 30-minute checks
have to be stopped or people are going to get sick or worse.” In
addition, they report that regular prison programs have been negatively
impacted.

“To sleep is a fundamental human right,” said Anne
Weills, a member of the prisoners’ legal team and one of the attorneys
who conducted the interviews with prisoners in Pelican Bay. “To take
away such a basic human right amounts to severe torture, adding to the
already torturous conditions of being in solitary confinement.”

Most
prisoners report low energy, exhaustion and fatigue. Most state that
they have trouble concentrating. They try to read, but they nod off
and/or can’t remember what they have read. Their writing is much slower
(“I can’t think to write”), and describe the constant welfare checks as
having a negative impact on their mental state.

While this
recent attorney survey was specifically focusing on sleep deprivation
and its effects, prisoners volunteered information about the negative
impact of these frequent checks: yard policy and practice has reduced
access to recreation, access to showers has been reduced, programs and
meals are being delayed, and property for those newly transferred to
Pelican Bay is still being delayed and withheld.

Sleep
deprivation constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Prisoners and
their attorneys are demanding that these checks be halted.

Free Albert Woodfox!

On
June 8, 2015 a federal judge granted Louisiana prisoner Albert Woodfox
unconditional release. Albert's conviction had already been overturned
three times - most recently in 2013 - yet every time the state has
appealed.

Today, Albert is still behind
bars after spending four decades in cruel, unjust solitary confinement.
He believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace and Robert
King, were first placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for their
activism. All three men were members of the Black Panther Party.
Together, they came to be known as the Angola 3.

It is
time for the State of Louisiana to stop standing in the way of justice.
Call on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to ensure Albert's cruel and
unjust confinement is not his legacy. Learn more

Amnesty for all those arrested demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

Amnesty for ALL those arresteddemanding justice for Freddie Gray!

Sign and distribute the petition to drop the charges!Spread this effort with #Amnesty4Baltimore

"A riot is the language of the unheard" — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An
estimated 300 people have been arrested in Baltimore in the last two
weeks. Many have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in
the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested
include journalists, medics and legal observers.

One
individual arrested for property destruction of a police vehicle is now
facing life in prison and is being held on $500,000 bail. That's
$150,000 more than the officer charged with the murder of Freddie Gray.

The
legal system has made it clear that they care more about broken windows
than broken necks; more about a CVS than the lives of Baltimore's Black
residents.

They showed no hesitation in arresting Baltimore's
protesters and rebels, and sending in the National Guard, but took 19
days to put a single one of the killer cops in handcuffs. This was the
outrageous double standard that led to the Baltimore Uprising.

I
stand in solidarity with those in Baltimore who are demanding that all
charges be dropped against those who rose up against racism, police
brutality, oppressive social conditions and delay of justice in the case
of Freddie Gray. The whole world now recognizes that were it not for
this powerful grassroots movement, in all its forms, there would be no
indictment.

It is an outrage that peaceful
protesters have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in
the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested
include journalists and legal observers.

Even the youth
who are charged with property destruction and looting should be given
an amnesty. There is no reason a teenager -- provoked by racists and
justifiably angry -- should be facing life in prison for breaking the
windows of a police car.

The City of Baltimore should
work to rectify the conditions that led to this Uprising, rather than
criminalizing those who took action in response to those conditions.
Drop the charges now!

Sincerely,
[add your name below]

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CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!

Sign the Petition:

http://cancelallstudentdebt.com/?code=kos

Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:

Americans
now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that money
is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing burden for
more than 40 million Americans and their families.

I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private.

URGENT ALERT

MAJOR TILLERY IN HOSPITAL!

Sometime
yesterday Major Tillery, a 65 year-old man, was rushed to the hospital
from SCI Frackville. Since hearing this yesterday evening through the
prison grapevine, family and attorney have tried to learn more.

Today,
the only thing we have been told by Superintendent Brenda Tritt is that
this was “a routine admission” and Major is “receiving the appropriate
medical attention.” Nothing more to to Major Tillery’s daughter, Kamilah
Iddeen--not the hospital, the reason for rushing Major to the hospital,
no agreement for family and legal visits.
Major Tillery has liver
disease and a liver shunt, arthritis with chronic back and hip pain,
and a festering skin rash and open sores. Major Tillery has filed
grievance after grievance objecting to the lack of medical treatment and
refusal to renew needed medical devices.

Major Tillery
has been imprisoned for 30 years, 25 in the hole and in the most severe
super max prisons in the country. For prison officials his crime is his
advocacy for other prisoners and leadership capabilities, including
challenging abusive prison conditions and inadequate medical treatment.
He has been subject to retaliation by prison authorities since he began
his successful legal effort to stop the overcrowding and curb the
inhumane conditions in SCI Pittsburgh over 25 years ago. See, Tillery v.
Owens (1990)

In early 2015, Major complained about the
spreading skin disease at SCI Mahanoy, where he was then imprisoned. He
stood up for Mumia Abu-Jamal and other prisoners who were suffering
from this. For his acts of solidarity, Major Tillery was transferred to
SCI Frackville and then put in the hole on falsified charges. After four
months with limited food rations, deprived of commissary, contact
visits and allowed less than one-hour a day of exercise, Major was
released into general population. This was two months less than his
prison sentence of six months in the hole – the prison’s response to an
international campaign for Major!

Now Major is in the
hospital. He is not being allowed contact with his family or attorney.
They are not being given any real information on his condition.

Call prison officials and demand:
Visits
with Major Tillery by his family and lawyer. Full medical information
and treatment should be provided to his family and lawyer.
Stop
the Retaliation Against Major Tillery. He should be exonerated for the
false charges of drug possession and this misconduct removed from his
record.
Transfer Major Tillery from SCI Frackville back to SCI
Mahanoy or to another facility in eastern Pennsylvania to remain near
his family.

Last
night Mumia got notice that the final appeal of his PA Department of
Corrections grievance was denied. Listen to his reaction here.

This denial comes on top of the magistrate Judge’s proposal to deny Mumia's right to treatment last week.

Remember--
one of the reasons the Judge gave was her claim that Mumia had not
"exhausted his administrative remedies" or received a final denial of
his request for care. Now he has received that denial.

We
know that withholding Mumia’s care is immoral and illegal. We are
confident that we will win this battle in court- but we can’t do it
alone.

We have 3 days left to raise $2,948 to support Mumia’s legal team in securing his right to hepatitis C treatment!

If
you have already joined us, we’re inviting you to ask one friend to
match your gift. We need about 50 more freedom fighters to join us to
reach our goal— and we want you to make that happen with us!

If you haven’t given yet- now is the time to make a contribution for Mumia. Will you join us?

Health care is a human right- for Mumia, and for all prisoners. Let's prove it.‪ #freemumia #fight4mumia

Reply
directly to this email to respond to the campaign owner, Prison Radio .
Visit the campaign page to view all comments and updates for this
project.

Help spread the word about the campaign!

PRISONRADIO.ORG

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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson
Updates from the New "Team Free Lorenzo Johnson":
Thank
you all for your relentless effort in the fight against wrongful
convictions and your determination to stand behind Lorenzo.

To
garner even more support for Lorenzo Johnson, we have been hard at work
updating the website and developing an even more formidable and
dedicated team. Please take a moment to visit the new site here.

During
the month of July, Lorenzo wrote two new articles for The Huffington
Post titled "When Prosecutors Deny Justice for the Innocent," and "Hurry
Up and Wait for Justice: The Struggle of Innocent Prisoners." In these
articles, Lorenzo discusses the flaws in the criminal justice system,
which he deems is a "serious problem in this country."

Lastly, Lorenzo has a message to you all.

A Letter from Lorenzo:

July 23, 2015
Dauphin County Prison
Harrisburg, PA

Dear Supporters,

I
hope all is well with everyone and your families. As for myself, I'm
still on my journey in pursuit of my vindication. Sorry for my website
being shut down for a couple of weeks. It was being transferred to a new
provider and management. I'm back and will do my best to keep
everything up to speed with what's taking place.

I
would like to thank ALL of my loyal supporters in the U.S. and in the
MANY different counties that have signed on to support my innocence.
Thanks for all of the letters, emails, photos, etc. Like I always say, I
get energy to carry on and inspiration hearing form you, please stay
engaged in my struggle.

As of this moment, nothing has
changed, but – the continued delay tactics are constantly being used by
my prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General William Stoycos. With the
mounting of evidence that supports my innocence and police and
prosecution misconduct claims that is steadily piling up, you would
think that I would be having a couple of evidentiary hearings on my
actual innocence appeal that have been pending since August 5, 2013.

At
the time of this writing, I've been moved from SCI-Mahanoy to Dauphin
County Prison and locked down for 23 hours and 40 minutes a day. In the
20 minutes I get to come out, I get to take a shower and make a short
call. Prosecutor Stoycos had me moved so I can be a witness in his
attempt to have my codefendant Corey Walker's attorney removed from
representing him. How dare he call into question an attorney who is
seeking justice for her client, when prosecutor Stoycos himself violated
multiple constitutional rights of mine and Mr. Walker, that led to us
being in prison for 20 years and counting.

Prosecutor
Stoycos is continuously abusing his power and his endless resources he
has at his disposal. He is not tough on crime, he's tough on Innocent
Prisoners. Prosecutor Stoycos is doing everything in his power to
prevent justice from taking place. I encourage everyone to continue to
speak out against my nightmare, invite others to get involved by going
to my website and signing my Freedom Petition and whatever else they're
willing to do.

On a positive note, I just enrolled in
warehouse management trade and started on July 13th. Unfortunately,
you're only allowed to miss a couple of days and Prosecutor Stoycos had
me temporarily transferred on July 14th … It's extremely hard on Lifers
to get into these trades due to the fact that Lifers are placed at the
back of the list of ALL vocational classes. I try to further my
education every chance I get, so when I do come home, I will be
certified in different work.

The month of the hearing
has come and left, without me being brought to the courthouse … I'm one
of MANY innocent prisoners who endures this non-stop madness in our
pursuit of Justice and Freedom. Now that my webpage is almost caught up
to speed, I promise prompt updates and as everyone knows that contacted
me directly, I personally reply to those in the states and out of the
country. For those who can make a financial contribution, everything
counts. Take care and let's continue to fight until we achieve Freedom,
Justice, and Equality for all innocent prisoners.

"The Pain Within"

Free the Innocent
Lorenzo "Cat" Johnson

[Note: Lorenzo has since been transferred back to SCI Mahanoy and can be reached at his usual address.]

Thank
you all for reading this message and please take the time to visit the
new website and contribute to Lorenzo's campaign for freedom!

On
December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan
was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading
African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an
all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly
altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton
Harbor.

The prosecutor, with the judge's approval,
repeatedly told the jury "you don't need evidence to convict Mr.
Pinkney." And ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV.
PINKNEY TO THE 'ALTERED' PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led
away in handcuffs and thrown into Jackson Prison.

This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.

With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney's appeal.

Checks
can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community
Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney. Mail
them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI
49022.

Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.

For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search "Pinkney").

I
am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting
in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike
Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in
prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make
an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...)
ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I
arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred
people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people
recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the
prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2
days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on
the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this
racist."

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

Michigan
political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist
injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly
changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor
Mayor James Hightower.

No material or circumstantial
evidence was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the
purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County
activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization
(BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the
corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor,
Michigan.

In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an "Occupy the
PGA [Professional Golfers' Association of America]" demonstration
against a world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack
Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The
course was carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the
city of Benton Harbor decades ago.

Berrien County
officials were determined to defeat the recall campaign against Mayor
Hightower, who opposed a program that would have taxed local
corporations in order to create jobs and improve conditions in Benton
Harbor, a majority African-American municipality. Like other Michigan
cities, it has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment.

The
Benton Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent
charges to stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist
white officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black
city. Rev Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian
ministers do, was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper
column. This outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do
this again!

To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.

New Action--write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!

Secretary of the Army John McHugh

President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning's clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.

Please
write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks' whistle-blower
former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning's release from
military prison.

It is important that each of these
authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley)
Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions
understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for
following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these
individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in
Manning's outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this
stage.

The
letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and especially
why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning's sentence is
reduced. The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be
unlikely to help.

A suggested message: "Chelsea Manning
has been punished enough for violating military regulations in the
course of being true to her conscience. I urge you to use your
authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning's sentence to time served." Beyond that
general message, feel free to personalize the details as to why you
believe Chelsea deserves clemency.

Consider composing
your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself
(here are templates and some tips for doing that).

A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above

This
clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning's upcoming appeal
before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning's
new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the
prosecution's—and the trial judge's—misconduct during last year's trial
at Ft. Meade, Maryland.

Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea's legal fees at this critical stage!

A
protester with the organization Code Pink at the House Select
Intelligence Committee hearing on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (Fisa) on 29 October 2013. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

The
US intelligence community is in a very poor position to be trusted with
protecting civil liberties while engaging in intelligence work. When
you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail; when you’re a skilled
intelligence professional, everything looks like a vital source for
collection.

Members of the intelligence community are,
it’s true, under immense stress to prevent a devastating national
catastrophe. I understand a little of how that feels: while working as
an analyst in Iraq, thousands of military personnel, contractors and
local civilians were dependent on our ability to effectively understand
the threats we were facing, and to explain them to US military
commanders, the commanders of Iraqi forces and the civilian leadership
of both nations.

General Keith Alexander, the former
director of the National Security, frequently pushed very hard to
“collect it all”; during my time as an intelligence analyst, I
completely agreed with his mantra. So it’s not surprising that today’s
intelligence community – as well as law enforcement at all levels of
government – aggressively pursue an increasingly large and sophisticated
wish list of intelligence tools regardless of whether appropriate
oversight mechanisms are in place.

Given the immense
pressure to guard against the unknown or even unknowable, it’s plausible
that the US intelligence community doesn’t seek to deliberately violate
civil liberties and privacy on a grand scale. Rather, its myriad civil
liberties and privacy violations may just be the inevitable result of
scrutiny, oversight and transparency failures.

Besides which, what the intelligence community – including the NSA,
the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
the State Department and the military branches – will always fail to
accept is that simply having more tools for the collection, analysis and
timely dissemination of actionable intelligence is not the same thing
as having the tools necessary to perform such functions effectively.

And,
finally, assembling vast troves of raw surveillance information –
whether voluntarily in the case of the recent proposed “cybersecurity”
bills before the US Congress, or involuntarily under unilateral
subpoenas called “national security letters” or secret court orders – is
an inherently awful idea from a civil liberties and privacy
perspective.

Concerns about bulk data collection, the
lack of civilian oversight into the intelligence community’s actions and
whether it can effectively use all the information it collects
culminated in the recent passage of the USA Freedom Act, which purports
to:

…reform the authorities of the US government to require the
production of certain business records, conduct electronic surveillance,
use pen registers and trap and trace devices, and use other forms of
information gathering for foreign intelligence, counterterrorism, and
criminal purposes, and other purposes…

Those
courts were established nearly 40 years ago, in response to allegations
that the intelligence community was abusing their power in order to spy
on US citizens: the US Senate’s Church Committee conducted a massive
investigation into the intelligence community and expressed concerns
that the privacy rights of US citizens had been violated by activities
conducted under pretenses of foreign intelligence collection.

The
result then was new procedures and the creation of a new court system –
the Foreign Intelligence Court – to process surveillance requests by
the government in secret. Unfortunately, it also created a new host of
oversight problems: only a similar secret court process can review the
actions taken by the courts, leaving many in Congress and all of the
American public in the dark.

Some of these systemic problems have finally been examined by non-Fisa courts in the last two years – most notably by the US court of appeals for the second circuit early in 2015.
However, because of the continuing secrecy of the Fisa courts, any
ruling by a court of appeals was only a symbolic gesture. The USA
Freedom Act, for all that it’s trumpeted as the solution to some of the
excessed, does little to institute real oversight over the Fisa courts.

The
solution: we should abolish the entire Fisa Court system and bring all
surveillance requests into the oldest and most tested court system in
America: the US district courts and courts of appeal.

Such
a move is not a wildly unsafe idea: in the US, grand juries work in
secrecy, and the US courts regularly deal with classified information.
And the Fisa court itself doesn’t have separate personnel or facilities:
it always “borrowed” US district judges and used district court premises. Physically, no-one would have to even move offices to institute a civilian review structure subject to oversight.

If Congress did abolish the Fisa courts,
the Second Circuit ruling earlier this year would no longer be
symbolic. In spirit and in law, the entire surveillance review system
would end up where it probably should have started in the first place
after the Church Committee: in a tried and true, real and historically
viable court system. And the American people could have more faith that
our judicial branch wasn’t completely beholden to structures put into
place by the executive and legislative branches to limit
accountability.~

Check out other materials Chelsea released to correspond with her Nov 3rd op-ed

New Blog piece by Chelsea –
Ever wonder how Chelsea writes op-eds from prison? It’s no easy task!
Chelsea documents the challenge of writing the FISA Reform Act from
prison in her new Medium blog piece. Read it here.

Seattle voted for working-class politics by
re-electing socialist incumbent Kshama Sawant to City Council with a
five point lead over her challenger.

Seattle residents will be seeing
more campaigns in City Council and in the streets to fight inequality
and build social justice after the re-election of socialist City
Councillor Kshama Sawant in the city’s high-profile municipal election
on Tuesday.

“We have accomplished something historic,”
Sawant said to supporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday night as election
results came in. “We have had an open socialist re-elected to City
Council.”

Sawant, who secured a municipal minimum wage
increase in her first term in City Council, won Seattle’s District 3
area by 5 percentage points over challenger Pamela Banks, who has been
known to align herself with the business community.

Sawant
declared the win “a strong victory for all working people, for the
socialist movement,” and said that the re-election signaled that
“socialist politics are here to stay” in Seattle.

In
November 2013, Sawant won a seat in the city’s then at-large voting
system as a Socialist Alternative candidate. She became the first
socialist City Councillor elected in Seattle in over a century.

During
her first year in office, Sawant won a major campaign for working
people with the vote in May 2014 to increase Seattle’s minimum wage to
US$15 per hour. Despite the achievement, Sawant remained firm that the
approval was a partial victory because it allowed big corporations to
phase in new wages over a few years. She vowed as a councillor and an
activist to continue her fight for poor and low-income people.

Sawant
has also pushed a “millionaire tax” on the wealthy and rent control as
key policy issues. She has campaigned for workers’ and union rights, an
end to corporate influence in politics, affordable housing and tenant
rights, environmental policies and green jobs, and expansion of public
transit, among other issues.

Seeking re-election,
Sawant ran on a platform of making Seattle affordable for everyone and
building a city “free of discrimination and poverty, with racial and
gender equality, where all people can work and live in dignity,”
according to her campaign website.

Before running for
office, Sawant was involved in Seattle’s Occupy movement, which she
credited with bringing issues of class, capitalism, and inequality into
the political debate.

The City Council race was one of
Seattle’s most closely watched elections, according to local media. The
Seattle Post-Intelligencer described the election as a kind of
“referendum” on Sawant’s “working class agenda.”

The
election was also the first to be run on a district voting system in
over a century. While the nine City Council seats have represented the
whole city in the at-large system in use since 1911, now seven of the
seats are elected by district. Sawant’s District 3 represents the
Central Seattle area, including the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

A majority of women councilors make up Seattle’s newly elected City Council.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

3) YES , COMRADES, IT IS INDEED INTIFADA !
Answer
the Clarion Call to the International Socialist Movement from renowned
anti-zionist activist and voice of conscience Tikva Honig-Parnass:
A Taking Aim Appeal from Mya Shone and Ralph Schoenman:
Bravo Tikva!

More
than a month has passed since the outburst of the current Intifada.
During the first two weeks it was carried out by the youth of Jerusalem
who hold a blue identity card which permits them to move freely within
Israel. However since the third week, the intifada has spread to the
West Bank as well, largely but not only to Hebron area. Bir Zeit and
Al-Quds students (among others) have went out to the streets and were
involved in clashes with the Israeli army and the PA soldiers. The
soldiers often burst into the universities to kidnap activists, thus
preventing the ability to carry on regular studies. Last week
Palestinian women came out with a call to join the intifada and
emphasized Feminist positions of "gender equality in responsibility for
the Intifada."

Almost everyday a number of youngsters are
committing stubbing or running over operations against settlers in the
West Bank and Jerusalem or against Israelis in Israel "proper". Until
now( November 3) they have operated independently, with minimal
preparations or planning. They have not been supported, not to mention
organized by the political parties- not even by the "left" PFLP and
DFLP. The Palestinian Authority continues to collaborate with the
Israeli intelligence (Shabak) and by arresting or detaining activists,
(1179 in the West Bank and 59 in Gaza Strip) have managed to hinder many
operations. ( " this coordination with the Authority contributes to
calm the ground" the Israeli security spokesman told Haaretz ) .The
youth of the Gaza Strip demonstrated this month in different places
close to the Separation Wall and were involved in with strong clashes
with the Army.

The Palestinian citizens of Israel took part in
mass solidarity protests. MK Balad, Haneen Zoabi, truly expresses the
mood of rather large part of the Palestinians in Israel, especially the
'1948' young generation. In an interview granted to Hamas news paper ten
days ago she said:
“Today there are only actions of individuals, and
what is needed is popular support,” [..]“If individual attacks will
continue without popular support they will die out in a matter of days –
thousands of people going out will turn these events into a true
intifada.." Netanyahu directed Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein "to
open a criminal investigation against her for calling for a popular
Intifada against Israel.

Senior political commentators recognize
the "stormy and tumultuous" nature of the uprising and admit that it can
not be suppressed through the use of force. Amos Harel ( Haaretz, 23
October) described the determination and bravery of these youngsters:
"In most cases the presence of the Israeli soldiers or police and their
swift reaction, results in killing [namely executed] or wounding of the
attacker in a few minutes." [56 were killed in the West Bank or in
operations inside Israel and 17 in Gaza Strip and 2250 were wounded].
But this does not divert those youth from their aspiration. This wave
will not fade away by itself. On the contrary. Every killed knihfer
[sic] immediately turns to be a "Shahid".

Moreover, their
bravery is seen as similar the strugglers of the first Intifada: " The
2015 Palestinian youth remind us of their parents' generation- the youth
who marched bar-chest at the head of the demonstrations in the West
Bank and Gaza. Now they challenge the Israeli army and almost demand the
snipers to shoot them."

And indeed what we are witnessing is a
continuation of the past attempts of resistance to the Occupation. ( See
Ben White "Is it a Third Intifada?" for depicting the current uprising
as a link in the chain of different ways of Tzumud and resistance).

According
to Haaretz,the Israeli Security Establishment believes that the
Intifada would "escalate" and prepares for "a long confrontation". They
plan to enlist the reserves in order to strengthen the military regular
service, the majority of which has already stopped its training due to
the uprising. The Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot said in a rare interview
to channel 2 that "There is no focused or clear military solution to a
challenge of this kind. There is a multi- dimensional, combined
response.[I wander of what bloody means he is talking about] I can not
hide behind the matter that there is here a popular wide phenomenon
which is influenced by external events. I believe that the solution to
the problem would be found, but it will take time."
----------------------------
The
Marxist radical organizations in Europe and the USA have reacted to the
Intifada with a complete silence. They reported about the brutality of
Israel bloody policies and condemned it but did not call for solidarity
with the uprising or even named it as INTIFADA. I am preoccupied with
the questions: What is it in the nature of the present uprising that
kept my comrades so alienated? The stubbing?

The fact that it
has not yet developed into a mass popular Intifada? Is not their duty to
listen to the voices of the oppressed even when they are still weak? Is
it the yet lack of support by the Palestinian "representatives of the
masses"- the historic political parties- which has deterred them?
Howevr,
finally the Fatah has concluded that the intifada does exist. In the
morning news of November 3 it was broadcasted that "leaders of Fatah
call for expanding the uprising into a wide civil rebellion which will
include all parts of the people". Would this be sufficient to for the
Internationalist, Socialist organizations to grant their "legitimation"
to my Palestinian Glorious Brothers??

ISLAMABAD,
Pakistan — At least 16 people were killed and dozens wounded when a
factory undergoing expansion collapsed into rubble Wednesday evening in
an industrial park in eastern Pakistan, rescue workers and government officials said.

Seventy
laborers were pulled out from the debris alive, rescue workers said,
but about 100 are still believed to be trapped underneath. Excavators
and cranes were used to dig through the rubble and debris to look for
survivors.

Troops from the army’s engineering corps
have also been sent to the factory, near Lahore, to help in the rescue
effort, a spokesman for the military said.

A state of emergency was declared in Lahore hospitals.

The
site, run by Rajput Polyester Factory, manufactured plastic shopping
bags. The factory is in the Sundar Industrial Estate, a 1,750-acre
business park about 28 miles southwest of Lahore, the capital of Punjab
Province, officials said. At least 250 workers were employed there.

The
exact cause of the collapse was not immediately clear, said Ahad
Muzaffar Shah, a senior official of Bahria Town, a prominent property
and real estate developer whose rescue team also reached the site.

“The
building was already in a debilitated condition,” Mr. Shah said. He
said 54 workers were pulled from the rubble by his team. “We are using
dumpers, excavators and loaders for the rescue operation,” he said.

Construction
work was proceeding on the three-story building to add a fourth story,
and there was speculation initially that the roof under construction had
caved in, Mr. Shah said.

Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan expressed grief over the episode and
directed the provincial authorities to expedite the rescue efforts.

The
chief minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, the younger brother of Mr.
Sharif, said an inquiry had been ordered into the cause of the collapse.

The
episode has led to renewed calls for the government to take measures to
make sure that buildings do not violate laws and are properly
scrutinized by the authorities to ensure security and safety.

“Building
and construction bylaws are not stringently implemented in the city,”
said Sarah N. Ahmed, a building and urban design professional based in
Lahore. “A re-evaluation of construction and safety standards is needed
not only in Lahore, but all across the country.”

“Pakistan
is in an active earthquake zone, and rising density and urbanization
require responsible development in order to reduce the risk of loss of
life,” Ms. Ahmed said.

PAGEDALE,
Mo. — This spring, officials in this tiny city near St. Louis ordered
Valarie Whitner to replace her siding; repaint her gutters, downspout
and foundation; and put up screens or storm covers outside every window
and blinds or curtains on the inside.And that was before the list of
demands moved on to her roof, fence and yard.

Ms.
Whitner, 57, who works nights at a hospital, said she and her longtime
partner felt swamped beneath the costs of paying for the city-mandated
repairs and for fees, fines and court costs, which her lawyers say
included at least $2,400 in violations. She took out a high-interest
payday loan, which she still owes hundreds of dollars on and calls her
“Pagedale money.”“It was horrible,” Ms. Whitner said the other day from
her living room, which she has decorated with do-it-yourself vases and
paintings. “Pagedale just kept coming back to us, bothering us. At some
point, this is all just a way for the city to make money. It’s the
easiest way to make money.”

In the aftermath of the
fatal shooting of an unarmed teenager named Michael Brown by a white
police officer in Ferguson, residents in this region described a pattern
of mounting traffic fines, fees and arrests in the 90 municipalities
that make up St. Louis County. Many such abuses were described in a
scathing Justice Department report about Ferguson.

But
the problems facing Ms. Whitner in Pagedale represent another issue:
what many residents consider the abusive levying of fines or fees for
minor nontraffic ordinances, often involving unsightly lawns or houses.

On
Wednesday, lawyers from the Institute for Justice, a libertarian
public-interest firm based in Arlington, Va., filed a civil rights
complaint against Pagedale, which like Ferguson is in north St. Louis
County. The complaint, filed in United States District Court for the
Eastern District of Missouri, accuses the city of violating due process
and excess-fines protections in the Constitution by turning its code
enforcement and municipal court into “revenue-generating machines” to go
after residents.

The complaint, which seeks class-action status, calls for an injunction against the city’s reliance on such fines.

“We
hope that if the court agrees with us, the residents of Pagedale will
no longer be treated as walking cash machines by their city government
and that the city will limit its regulatory authority to things that
actually affect health or safety,” said William R. Maurer, the managing
attorney of the Institute for Justice’s office in Washington State. The three named plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Ms. Whitner and her partner, Vincent Blount.

Sam
Alton, the city attorney for Pagedale, said the city strongly disagreed
with any assertion that it had pursued housing violations to make
money. The portion of revenue the city derives from such tickets is
small, Mr. Alton said, adding: “It’s got nothing to do with driving up
revenue. And it’s got everything to do with making the properties code
compliant and safe.”

After the Justice Department’s
report, which asserted that Ferguson was using law enforcement to
generate revenue for its budget, Missouri lawmakers enacted legislation
that lowered
a cap on how much of a city’s revenues may come from traffic fines; in
St. Louis County, cities were limited to 12.5 percent of their revenues.

But that law
addresses only traffic violations, and some here worry that St. Louis
County municipalities are turning to nontraffic fees and fines to make
up the lost revenue. In the case of Pagedale, Mr. Maurer said he
believed the city had begun doing that years ago when an earlier limit
on traffic revenues was imposed. In the mid-1990s, the traffic-fine cap
had been 45 percent until legislation began gradually reducing it.

“I
think it’s appropriate for policy makers to be mindful that there may
be another wave of profiteering that manifests itself in a different
form, and continues to create a cycle of poverty,” Eric Schmitt, a
Republican state senator who had pressed for the tougher limits on
traffic fines, said in an interview. “If we see that, all options are on
the table.”

The practice of many St. Louis County
municipalities of using traffic and nontraffic fines and fees to finance
their budgets has also led to calls for some of those towns to
consolidate operations as a means of reducing government costs. A
commission assigned by Gov. Jay Nixon to study the underlying causes of
the Ferguson unrest issued a long list of recommendations that included consolidating some of the 60 police departments and 81 municipal courts that serve the county.

Residents
here say leaders in Pagedale, a predominantly black city of trim homes
and about 3,300 people a few miles south of Ferguson, pride themselves
on the city’s appearance and on a recent burst of new development, which
includes a grocery store and a movie theater that was set to open this
week. Some spoke with pride of the city’s Police Department and
carefully kept sidewalks.

Yet in recent years, some
here say, warning notices have begun appearing on house after house. In
2013, the city generated 17 percent of its $2 million in revenue from
all fines and fees, documents show, though Mr. Alton said the portion
was lower now. According to an article in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
that first described the rise in nontraffic cases in the region’s
municipalities, Pagedale officials issued 495 percent more tickets and
citations unrelated to traffic in the years since 2010. City officials
dispute that claim, saying the increase was smaller.

To
hear residents here tell it, the violations can seem endless: having a
wading pool in front of the front line of the house; having a dish
antenna on the front of the house; wearing pants below the waist in
public; having a hedge above three feet in the front yard.

Mildred
Bryant, who has lived here for nearly 47 years, got a warning letter in
May. Her house is old, she says, but not unsafe. Still, she was given
no more than 30 days to fix a dozen violations, the letter said, or face
a court summons.

“I’ve never really gotten in trouble
before,” said Ms. Bryant, 84, the third plaintiff in the class-action
lawsuit. “I wasn’t sure what to think. What is this all about all of the
sudden? Is it about wanting more money?”

Ms. Bryant
said she found several of the violations baffling, not to mention beyond
her limited retirement income. “All windows need screens and window
treatment such as blinds and or matching curtains, slats, etc.,” the
letter said. She also was ordered to repaint her porch and building
foundation, “touch up paint or repaint entire house,” cut back weeds and
“treat fence line with brush killer.”

In the months since, Ms. Bryant said, her sons have helped her try to meet the requirements.

Mr.
Alton said that the city was working with Ms. Bryant to help her get
her home up to code, as it is with other residents. She has not been
fined, only warned. The point, Mr. Alton said, is to make sure
properties are safe and code compliant, not to collect money.

“You
have a city that’s trying to live within the law and to make the city
nice for its residents and make its properties safe,” he said.

Cambridge,
England — IN January, researchers at King’s College London announced
that pollution levels on Oxford Street, in central London, had exceeded
limits set for the entire year in just the first four days of 2015.
Similarly alarming numbers have been recorded for other streets in the
city — and yet the mayor, Boris Johnson,
has delayed implementation of stricter air-quality measures until
2020.What’s happening in London is being played out in cities worldwide,
as efforts to curtail the onslaught of air pollution are stymied by
short-term vested interests, with potentially disastrous results.

This
is not the first time that society has confronted a threat of this
kind. In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution brought millions
into the world’s cities, which expanded with unprecedented rapidity,
leading to atmospheric pollution as the fossil fuels burned in urban
homes poured huge quantities of sooty, sulfurous emissions into the air.

Nowhere was this more obvious, or more threatening, than in the
greatest of all Victorian cities, London, where air pollution was
literally in front of everyone’s face in the form of the city’s
infamous, polluted fog.

The British capital is particularly
liable to natural winter fogs. It is surrounded by low hills, with
marshland on its outskirts, and a large river running through it. Its
location encourages the meteorological phenomenon of temperature
inversion, when warm air traps cold air beneath it for days on end.
During such a fog, the sulfur-laden smoke from domestic coal fires and
factory chimneys was unable to rise into the upper atmosphere, and
seeped into the natural fog, turning it yellow, brown, green or black — a
process beautifully captured by Claude Monet in his series of paintings
of London fog.

Such fogs were known as “pea soupers.” As the
name suggested, they were often so thick that people could not see their
own feet as they walked through them on the city streets. As the city
grew, these fogs occurred more frequently; they became more dense, and
they lasted longer.

Londoners were well aware of the dangers the
fogs posed to health. In 1873 a number of prize cattle at the Smithfield
cattle show, in central London, choked to death during a particularly
dense and suffocating fog. Newspapers and medical experts pointed to a
statistical increase in deaths in London’s human population from
bronchitis and other respiratory diseases during fogs. Now-forgotten
pulp-fiction writers like William Delisle Hay produced alarmist stories
imagining the destruction of London’s entire population caused by the
fog.

Fog could also be a cover for crime. “Linklighters,” boys or
men who earned a few pennies carrying lighted torches to lead people
through the darkened world of the London streets, would sometimes lead
people down a quiet alleyway to be robbed. Burglars were reported to be
particularly fond of breaking into people’s houses during major fogs,
which not only made them hard to see, but deadened sound as well.

And
yet, for decades, every law proposed in Parliament to curb smoke
emissions was watered down so heavily that it had no tangible effect.
What explains such legislative inertia?

Vested interests were a
major obstruction. In 19th- and 20th-century London, many industries
thwarted attempts by successive governments to clean up the capital’s
air. Often they would simply refuse to install smoke purifiers on their
factory chimneys, blaming the smoke from household fires instead.

Moreover,
the fines on violators were often so small that they could not serve as
a deterrent. Magistrates had sympathy for the industrialists,
especially the smaller ones, who could not afford to convert their
furnaces to more efficient, cleaner models. And, above all, smoke from
industrial chimneys represented jobs and growth — which, in turn, gave
people wages with which they could afford a fire at home, thus
exacerbating the problem.

There was a cultural component, too.
The British were wedded to their open fires. Closed stoves, popular
throughout much of Europe, especially in Germany, were shunned by
Londoners. During World War I, Britons were exhorted, in the words of
the famous song, to “keep the home fires burning.” Politicians were
simply not willing to risk unpopularity by forcing Londoners to stop
using coal and go over to gas or electric heating instead. In Britain
today, in an echo of these earlier concerns, the government is cutting
subsidies for onshore wind and solar farms, anxious not to offend voters
in rural areas where such facilities would be built.It took a disaster
to force London to change direction. In 1952, a “great killer fog”
lasted five days and killed an estimated 4,000 people. In a Britain
trying to turn a corner after the death and destruction of the Blitz,
this was unacceptable. A Clean Air Act
was passed in 1956, forcing Londoners to burn smokeless fuel or switch
to gas or electricity, power sources that had become much cheaper as
these industries expanded.

Legislation for clean air was taken up
by many politicians, but perhaps the most surprising was the
extravagantly mustachioed Conservative politician Sir Gerald Nabarro,
whose flamboyantly expressed opinions included the retention of capital
punishment, opposition to European integration and strident racism. But
it was Nabarro who sponsored the 1956 act.

More surprisingly
still, it was Robert Maxwell, the Czechoslovakian-born British media
mogul and Labour member of Parliament, who pushed through further
legislation in 1968 to strengthen the provisions of the previous bill.
His dubious financial transactions may have earned him the nickname “the
bouncing Czech,” but in this instance he performed a genuine public
service.

The 1956 act took a long time to become effective, but
it worked: Another great yellow fog in 1962 was the last. Since then,
despite the belief in some parts of the world — not least the United
States — that there are still foggy days in London town, pea soupers
have become a thing of the past.

And yet, after several decades
of cleaner air, we seem to be sliding back. Motor vehicles are now the
main cause of air pollution, and campaigners are trying to create some
urgency around the debate to reduce car emissions. But people are as
wedded to cars now as they were tied to their open fires a century or
more ago. Will another eccentric British politician take up the mantle?

Mr.
Johnson is certainly eccentric, but he has vehemently denied reports
about London’s increasing pollution. “Ludicrous urban myth,” he wrote on
Twitter. “London air qual better than Paris and many other Euro cities —
and go to Beijing or Mexico City.” He later backed off his statement
somewhat, but he also pared back London’s planned Ultra Low Emissions
Zone and put off any effective action until 2020.

Empty promises,
delays and evasions are reactions that many of London’s earlier
clean-air campaigners would have recognized only too well. If a city
like London can’t control its air quality, what hope is there for
Beijing or Mexico City, or indeed the rest of the world’s rapidly
growing cities? Great fogs may not come back to England, but it’s
unlikely that the world has seen its last pea souper.

Christine L. Corton is a senior member of Wolfson College, Cambridge University and the author of “London Fog: A Biography.”

El BUREIJ, Gaza Strip — The Palestinian youths huddled in the prohibited zone along the fence separating Gaza from Israel
on Friday, cloaked by thick smoke pluming from flaming tires as they
hurled rocks at Israeli jeeps. A tear gas canister came thudding down
over their heads, and one teenager dashed over to pick it up and throw
it into a puddle on a rainy afternoon.This is the new normal in Gaza,
where nearly every day since early October hundreds of youths have
staged a demonstration of defiance against Israel by rushing the Gaza security fence en masse, and sometimes crossing it, to show solidarity with Palestinians under fire in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“We
want to send a message to the Israelis that we exist,” said Suheil, 24,
who like most of the demonstrators requested that his family name be
kept secret to avoid reprisal. “I feel like I’m in solidarity with our
brothers in Jerusalem and the West Bank.”But the demonstrations are also
in defiance of the Islamist group Hamas,
which governs Gaza and is trying to keep the battered territory out of
trouble with Israel, even as the group’s leaders urge Palestinians in
the West Bank to rise up.

At least 15 Palestinians have been
killed in the Gaza fence demonstrations, including a 23-year-old killed
on Friday, according to Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.

At
two separate demonstrations on Friday, one on the outskirts of Gaza
City, another on the outskirts of El Bureij, a refugee camp in central
Gaza, a few demonstrators tried to dash across the fence into Israel.

Most
others, though, hurled rocks in the direction of military jeeps, or
just sat on nearby mounds to watch. One was Muhanad, an 18-year-old who
said he was staying put after he tried to rush the fence at an earlier
demonstration, but ran away when an Israeli jeep opened fire in his
direction. “I even forgot my flip-flops there,” he said.

Nearby,
the rat-a-tat of live fire echoed, and an ambulance siren blared as a
wounded demonstrator was rushed out. A small boy pretended that he, too,
was injured. He collapsed on the ground and two others carried him
away, giggling. Within minutes though, dozens of boys rushed away for
real as Israel forces peppered the area with tear gas.

In all, 72
Palestinians have been killed since a spate of protests, stabbings and
vehicular attacks erupted in October in the West Bank and East
Jerusalem. Palestinians have killed 10 Israelis in that period, and some
of the Palestinian deaths have come during such attacks or attempted
attacks. Many Palestinians, however, question whether some of the
reported attacks actually occurred, and say Israel has used excessive
force.

On Friday, one of those killed by Israeli soldiers was a
72-year-old Palestinian woman, Tharwat al-Sharawi, who was shot in
Halhoul, a town in the southern West Bank. An Israeli military
spokeswoman said Ms. Sharawi’s vehicle sped up to head directly at a
group of soldiers, who jumped out of the way and shot her.

Palestinian
news media quoted her son Ayoub as saying that his mother had stopped
to get gasoline when the soldiers inexplicably opened fire. He said his
father had been shot dead by Israeli forces during the first intifada in
1988.

In nearby Hebron, a gunman opened fire on Israelis near a
shrine holy to Jews and Muslims, wounding two; the attacker fled,
according to news media reports. Another suspected Palestinian attacker
was reported to have shot a 19-year-old near Hebron and then fled. And
in an industrial area, an Israeli was stabbed and wounded, supposedly by
a Palestinian.

While the trigger for demonstrations was
Palestinian fears over the fate of a holy site in Jerusalem, a rapidly
growing discontent with their political leaders and Israel’s continued
military occupation appear to be at its core.

Gaza’s
demonstrations were first called by a group of activists who have long
resisted Hamas’ heavy-handed rule. One activist, Fadi Alsheikh-Yousef,
28, said they were trying to organize peaceful activities, too, like
demonstrating outside United Nations offices in Gaza, demanding that the
group intervene. “We need to engage with people’s humanity,” he said.

Some of the protesters said they had also participated in rare demonstrations in September
against Hamas over intensified outages of electricity and water.
“There’s a huge amount of frustration and depression inside me,” said
one, Hamada, 23, who is unemployed. “I want to be involved in all
demonstrations against oppression and occupation.”

But the mass
rushes to the Gaza security fence — where Hamas forces patrol along a
dirt road on one side, and Israeli soldiers patrol the other — have
swept up an unusually broad swath of young Palestinians.

Early
on, Hamas forces set up checkpoints to bar demonstrators from reaching
the border area, said about a dozen protesters interviewed separately.
The protesters would rush past, and some were beaten up.

Mahmoud al-Zahar, one of Hamas’ leaders in Gaza, said they were trying to prevent collaborators from fleeing into Israel.

More
recently, Hamas security forces appear to wear civilian clothes and
mingle with the protesters, ensuring nobody is carrying weapons — much
like their rival Palestinian security counterparts in the West Bank whom
they have harshly criticized.

Taher Nunu, a Hamas spokesman in
Gaza, said they could not allow any violence from the territory against
Israel because they had agreed to a truce that ended last summer’s
devastating war. “That’s a political and sovereign issue, and we are
abiding by that,” Mr. Nunu said.

So far, Hamas is gambling on
hopes that Palestinians in the West Bank will keep the uprising going
without active support from Gaza. They expect that a continuing conflict
will fray support for the security coordination conducted between
Israel and the West Bank security forces of the Palestinian Authority,
used chiefly to crack down on Hamas loyalists in that territory.

Akram
Attallah, a writer with the Palestinian newspaper Al Ayyam, said Hamas
was in a difficult position. The group looks as if it is betraying its
own militant words by trying to stop protests, but if it participated,
it would invite a harsh Israeli response.

“They know that Gaza
needs reconstruction, not destruction. Gaza is still emerging from a
war,” he said, referring to last summer’s war, the third in 10 years.

Adding
to their misery, most of Gaza’s Palestinians are effectively locked
into the tiny coastal territory, since few are allowed to leave through
Israel, and Egypt has only briefly opened its border crossing this year.
The United Nations estimated that some 80 percent of Gaza’s 1.8 million
Palestinians relied on international assistance to survive.

Hamas’
cautious approach, so far, appears supported by most of Gaza’s
residents, like Hamada Isdoudi, a car parts salesman, and his customer
Ahmad.

“Of course I care about what’s happening,” Ahmad, 21, said
on a recent day, as he checked out parts of a rusty yellow car in a
dusty spare parts shop just a few hundred feet where the demonstrations
took place. “I watch it on television.”

“All of the West Bank can burn!” shouted Mr. Isdoudi, 25, in response.

“We
gave the cause our martyrs,” Ahmad said. “They should fight now too,”
he said of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“They
are part of us; we are the same people,” said a shopkeeper, Hani Hilis,
39, standing nearby. “We share the same destiny,” he added. But what
could he do? His home was damaged in the last war and still was not
repaired. He barely eked out a living for his six children, he said.

“We have swallowed so much suffering,” he said, sighing.

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8) Two Louisiana Officers Charged With Second-Degree Murder in Killing of Boy, 6

Two
police officers have been arrested on charges of second-degree murder
in connection with the shooting death of a 6-year-old boy during a
pursuit of his father in a sport utility vehicle in central Louisiana,
the state police said Friday.

The officers, Norris Greenhouse Jr.
and Lt. Derrick Stafford, who were placed on administrative leave after
the chase on Tuesday, also face charges of attempted second-degree
murder, Col. Michael Edmonson, superintendent of the Louisiana State
Police, said during a news conference on Friday.

The father,
Chris Few, who was driving, was critically injured in the shooting. Mr.
Few’s son, Jeremy Mardis, was killed after the police opened fire on the
S.U.V.

The coroner said the boy was struck several times in the
head and chest. An autopsy was performed on Wednesday, but a final
report was not expected to be ready for eight weeks.“He didn’t deserve
to die like that and that’s what’s important,” Colonel Edmonson said
Friday. “That little boy was buckled in the front seat of that vehicle
and that was how he died.”

Colonel Edmonson said that over
the past 72 hours, investigators had studied footage from body cameras,
interviewed witnesses and listened to 911 recordings. He promised a
“methodical and detail oriented investigation.”

He declined to say why the police began pursuing Mr. Few’s vehicle, or what caused them to open fire.

Describing
the body camera footage, Colonel Edmonson said, “I can tell you as a
father it was one of the most disturbing things I have witnessed.”

Two
other police officers were involved in the chase, in addition to
Officer Greenhouse and Lieutenant Stafford, the superintendent said, but
he declined to say whether either of the other officers was suspected
of wrongdoing.

He said investigators would follow the case
“wherever this takes us” and that the state police had seized guns from
all officers present during the shooting.

All four are officers with the Marksville, La., police who work part time as city marshals.

Colonel
Edmonson said a forensic report from the crime scene would show how
many guns and bullets had been fired. That report should be available by
next Thursday, he said.

The state police said in a statement on
Thursday that the officers had opened fire on the S.U.V. at the end of
the pursuit, about 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, in Marksville.

Marksville, a city of about 5,500, is north of Lafayette, near the Mississippi border.

Jeremy
was a student with special needs at Lafargue Elementary School in
Effie, Blaine Dauzat, the school district superintendent, said in a
telephone interview. The child had transferred to the school during the
previous term from Mississippi.

A former sheriff’s deputy convicted of using a Taser to repeatedly shock
a restrained detainee who later died in a cell was sentenced Friday to
spend a month behind bars and will be allowed to serve the time on
weekends. A Chatham County Superior Court jury last month acquitted the
ex-deputy, Jason Kenny, of involuntary manslaughter in the January death
of Mathew Ajibade, 21. Mr. Kenny still faced up to three years in
prison after being found guilty of cruelty to an inmate but will spend
most of his three-year sentence on probation. Judge James Bass also
spared a second former deputy, Maxine Evans, who was convicted of faking
jail records and perjury. Ms. Evans, accused by prosecutors of trying
to cover up failures to check Mr. Ajibade’s medical condition, received
six years on probation when she could have gone to prison for 40 years. A
jail nurse, Gregory Brown, got three years on probation for making
false statements to investigators. Mr. Ajibade was in jail on domestic
violence charges when a fight broke out as deputies tried to book him.
An autopsy found no single cause for his death.

SAN DIEGO — The Navy fired an unarmed missile from a submarine off the coast of Southern California on Saturday, creating a bright light that streaked across the state and was visible as far away as Nevada and Arizona.

A Navy spokesman told The San Diego Union-Tribune (http://bit.ly/1Qm74Sn ) the Navy Strategic Systems Programs conducted the missile test at sea Saturday from the USS Kentucky, a ballistic missile submarine.

Cmdr. Ryan Perry said the launches are conducted on a frequent basis to ensure the continued reliability of the system and that information about such test launches is classified prior to the launch.

The lack of information about the streak of light around sunset led to a flurry of calls to law enforcement agencies and lit up social media as people posted photos and video of the celestial sight.

Julien Solomita just happened to be shooting some video footage when his group saw something odd in the sky.

"It was very wild watching this in the sky," he said in an email to The Associated Press. "I can't really say what I thought it was because I've never experienced anything remotely close to it."

It wasn't clear whether the test was related to the rerouting of nighttime flights into and out of Los Angeles International Airport because of an active military airspace from Friday to Nov. 12.

Flights usually arrive and depart over the ocean from midnight to 6:30 a.m. to minimize noise, but they will have to go over communities east of the airport.

A message seeking comment from the Federal Aviation Administration hasn't been returned.

The test was conducted in the Pacific Test Range, a vast area northwest of Los Angeles where the Navy periodically test-fires Tomahawk and Standard cruise missiles from surface ships and submarines.

FRANKFURT — Volkswagen’s recent disclosure that it reported false fuel economy and carbon dioxide readings to European regulators was prompted by an internal whistle-blower, the company said on Sunday.Volkswagen’s admission last Tuesday that it had underreported carbon dioxide emissions on 800,000 diesel- and gasoline-powered cars in Europe. That disclosure added to the automaker’s credibility problems, which began in September when it admitted that it had installed software on millions of its diesel cars in recent years to enable them to cheat on air-pollution tests.

In trying to determine who was responsible for the diesel cheating scandal, Volkswagen’s internal investigators have reportedly been hampered by an ingrained fear of delivering bad news to superiors. But in the case of the new disclosure, some employees have evidently been willing to come forward under the company’s new management.

Volkswagen on Sunday broadly confirmed a report in Bild am Sonntag, a German newspaper, that an engineer at the company had volunteered information about how employees had manipulated tests for carbon dioxide emissions and fuel economy. Tires, for example, were filled with more air than normal, the newspaper reported.

“In the course of internal investigations, employees have admitted that there were irregularities in communication of fuel consumption values,” Volkswagen said in a statement on Sunday.

Eric Felber, a Volkswagen spokesman, said he could not provide further details.

The diesel cheating scandal involves the company’s manipulation of pollution control systems on 11 million cars that enabled them to pass emissions control tests in laboratory settings but allowed the cars on the road to emit up to 40 times the allowable limits of nitrogen oxides, a pollutant that can damage lungs.

The more recently disclosed problem involves understating the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by 800,000 Volkswagen cars — mainly diesels but also some gasoline vehicles — sold in Europe. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.

Although United States regulators do not measure cars’ carbon dioxide emissions, European officials do. And many countries in Europe allow tax credits based on low carbon emissions in relation to higher fuel economy. Volkswagen said last week that it would set aside 2 billion euros, or about $2.2 billion, to pay back tax credits the company and car owners had received under false pretenses.

In the case of the diesel scandal, the cheating apparently began around 2008 after it became apparent that Volkswagen would be unable to achieve the clean-diesel promises it had made publicly as the company bet a big part of its future on diesel vehicles.

Overstatement of carbon dioxide goals may have followed a similar course. In 2012, Martin Winterkorn, who was then the chief executive of Volkswagen, said at the Geneva International Motor Show that by 2015 the company would cut emissions of carbon dioxide by 30 percent from 2006 levels. If met, the goal would have meant that Volkswagen vehicles would have performed even better than the targets set by European regulations in the effort to slow global warming.

Employees were afraid to admit to Mr. Winterkorn that they could not meet the goals, and decided to cheat, Bild am Sonntag reported. The newspaper’s reports about Volkswagen have been reliable in the past, and a person close to top management, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said he had no reason to doubt the information.

Mr. Winterkorn resigned within a week of the disclosure of the diesel deception by the Environmental Protection Administration in the United States.

The company has said that 11 million cars, including 500,000 in the United States, have the illegal software. Volkswagen is trying to find a way to make the vehicles compliant with regulations. It remains a mystery who was responsible for the software used to fool regulators about nitrogen oxide emissions.

Volkswagen has been trying to demonstrate that it is determined to get to the bottom of the wrongdoing and be more forthcoming about what happened. The chances of finding out who was responsible are greater if employees are more willing to speak under the new chief executive, Matthias Müller, who replaced Mr. Winterkorn and has vowed to overhaul the company’s management culture.

As part of an effort to demonstrate more openness, top officials at Volkswagen personally informed Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany about the false carbon dioxide claims before issuing the public statement last week, according to a person briefed on the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mr. Müller and Hans Dieter Pötsch, chairman of the supervisory board, traveled to Berlin to tell Ms. Merkel and other high-ranking government officials. The meeting was first reported by Bild am Sonntag.

Volkswagen’s most recent admissions about false carbon dioxide claims also put pressure on the German government, raising questions about why regulators did not scrutinize automaker data more closely. Environmental groups say that German regulators have been reluctant to challenge automakers because of their importance to the economy.